Yoast SEO is a very popular WordPress plugin for SEO and has over 5 million active installations. The very statistic is proof that it is a solid option trusted by a lot of people.

On the flipside, we have Rank Math from MyThemeShop. Although the plugin’s popularity is low in comparison to Yoast SEO, it has great reviews and an awesome collection of features.

This brings the question, which one should you choose – the one that’s popular with a massive user base, or the one that’s promising and boasts a handful of useful features?

This is a very common problem for WordPress users. The CMS (Content Management System) boasts a laundry list of plugins, which makes it difficult to find out which one will work the best for you. This is more so the case when every plugin calls themselves “The Best”.

What Makes SEO so Important?

You see, search engines like Google and Bing, use search algorithms to find and rank the most relevant websites by the search term. And the critical takeaway from this is that the site that ranks at the top takes away 70% of all traffic. That’s huge!

So if you want your site on the top of the SERP (Search Engines Result Page), you need to optimise your content properly. However, this need not be too difficult, and WordPress users can easily streamline the process using SEO plugins like Yoast SEO or Rank Math.

Which WordPress SEO Plugin Should I Use?

Let’s pin Yoast SEO against Rank Math to find out their pros and cons, so you can make an informed decision as to which WordPress SEO plugin is best for you.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – Review

Installing and activating the plugins are as straightforward as installing any other WordPress plugin. Furthermore, once activated, both plugins will create a new section on your WordPress dashboard sidebar. Here you can set up different attributes of the plugin and configure how it will optimize your content for increased organic traffic.

It’s worth pointing out, that upon activation, Rank Math will require you to login/create a Rank Math account and assign it to your website. It will also start up a setup wizard which will help you get all options in place for smooth user experience. Yoast SEO also offers a “configuration wizard“, but the user needs to activate it manually.

Overall, in all intent and purposes, Rank Math is much more user-friendly compared to Yoast SEO, which is highly important for users with no experience regarding SEO.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – User Interface

As far as UI is concerned, Yoast SEO focuses more on functionality than aesthetics. Sure, you can get everything done with all the options neatly organized under well-defined categories. But there is no helping the fact that the Yoast SEO UI seems a bit bland and uninspired.

This can be a turn off for some people, especially when functionality and aesthetics don’t need to be mutually exclusive traits. This holds even truer when you consider how Rank Math implements a visually attractive interface which not only looks and feels modern but also enhances the user experience.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – Keyword Integration

Keyword integration is one of the crucial factors for optimizing your content for search engines. You need to optimize your posts and pages concerning a set keyword or keyphrase so that when a user searches for that particular term, your content will show up on the SERP.

Now Yoast SEO is excellent when it comes to keyword optimization for your content. For free, you can optimize your content to rank for a single keyword, whereas it’s premium version allows you to implement multiple keyword integration.

This is another point where Rank Math takes the cake. Here you get to optimize your content for up to 5 focus keywords for free!

Well, what if you only have in mind, a single keyword to use for your content. In that case, Rank Math will automatically start suggesting different keywords as well as longtail keywords based on Google keyword suggestions.

With that being said, the feature doesn’t give you any insight about the suggested keywords regarding their search volume, competition, and so on.

Yoast SEO lacks any in-built equivalent to the functionality. In that case, if you want some keyword ideas, you will need to use a third-party online tool to generate keyword ideas.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – Schema.org Integration

Schema.org allows you to enable rich snippets, star ratings, and so on, directly on the SERP. This makes your content stand out and increases the click-through rates.

Now, the great thing about Rank Math is that it offers full schema support for any content you might have on your website. However, Yoast SEO completely skips on the functionality, forcing you to install another plugin for schema.org integration on your website.

Understandably, installing a single plugin that handles both your SEO and Schema requirements is far better than having to deal with two separate ones. This gives Rank Math another advantage over Yoast.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – Google Search Console Integration

Rank Math makes it super convenient to keep track of your Google Search Console data. During the setup process, all you have to do is input and verify your Gmail account, and it will fetch the associated Search Console data in your WordPress dashboard.

Now, Yoast SEO does offer Google Search Console integration, but there is no way to monitor your data from your WordPress dashboard.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – External Link Manager

It is common practice to assign nofollow tags to external outbound links associated with your content. This makes sure that web crawlers don’t associate your site’s SEO score with that of the link target.

Now, it is very easy to incorporate a nofollow tag in your content by just tweaking with the hyperlink in HTML format. But if coding isn’t your cup of tea, the Rank Math has you covered with its dedicated External Link Manager. You can assign every single outbound link as nofollow straight from the setup wizard.

Yoast SEO skips out on this particular feature.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – Redirect Manager

We all need to incorporate internal links and external links in our website for enhanced user experience. However, these links can generate errors like 404 – page not found, if the concerned link targeted has been removed. Likewise, your site can also have broken links as well.

All these can create a negative impact on the user and can result in increased bounce rate. However, the issue can be quickly resolved using a redirect manager. Now both Rank Math and Yoast SEO offer a dedicated and powerful redirect manager.

The only difference is that Rank Math makes it available for free, whereas, with Yoast SEO, you need to upgrade to the premium version.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – Image & Video SEO

By adding relevant meta descriptions and alt tags to your images and videos, you can leverage these media files as a means for siphoning organic traffic to your website.

Now both Yoast SEO and Rank Math offers SEO functionalities for image files with various settings.

In regards to Video SEO, Rank Math allows the option to add Video Rich Snippets, which can boost your overall traffic inflow. Many more advanced functionalities are also available with Yoast SEO for Video SEO, but all of it is stored away in the premium version of the plugin.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – Content Analysis

Both plugins analyze your content directly from the WordPress post editor and recommend changes that will influence your SEO score.

With that being said, Yoast SEO handles the feature in a qualitative sense. It analyzes your content to tell you if the optimization is GOOD or BAD simply.

Rank Math handles this aspect correctly. First of all, your content is given a score from 1 to 100, which is much more clear in terms of how well you have optimized your posts. On top of that, any recommendations it has are very clear and detailed, which makes it actionable.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – XML Sitemap

XML sitemaps are used by Search Engine bots and web crawlers to navigate through all the different posts and pages on your website and properly index them on the search engine database. Without XML sitemaps, these bots might miss out on some posts on your site, as a result of which, it will never show up on the SERP.

Now both Yoast SEO and Rank Math allow you to create XML sitemaps at the push of a button. This will not cause you any headache, and you are good to go with either of the plugins.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – SEO Audit Tool

An SEO Audit Tool can give you a detailed insight on your website(s) overall SEO score. This can help you see what areas you have got right, and which issues need to be improved.

Rank Math has its own dedicated SEO Audit Tool, integrated straight into your WordPress dashboard. You might not get the insight equal to a premium third-party SEO Audit Tool like SEMRush, but the data is actionable and insightful.

Yoast SEO has no such functionalities, and you are forced to use an external service to audit your website concerning SEO.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – WooCommerce SEO

WooCommerce is the de-facto eCommerce plugin for WordPress. It helps to incorporate e-Commerce capabilities on your WordPress website, including creating shop listings, adding products, enabling payment gateways, and much more.

Both Yoast and Rank Math offers WooCommerce SEO functionalities, which can help you incorporate metadata about the products so that it shows up directly on the search engine feed when a potential customer is searching for it.

However, as we have seen as some type of a trend by now, Rank Math provides WooCommerce SEO functionality absolutely for free, whereas it is locked as a premium feature on Yoast SEO.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – Role Manager

The role of manager functionality, as you can guess by the name, allows you to control the roles and level of permission different authors have on your website. The feature is useful to multi-author websites running over 100 authors working together to create quality content.

Now to ensure all authors can produce SEO optimized for your website, Rank Math incorporates a Role Manager functionality, a feature which Yoast SEO skips out. But in defense of the later, if its a simple blog or website with you as its only author, then the extra functionality seems somewhat meaningless and rather intrudes as bloat.

Yoast SEO vs. Rank Math – Support

Yoast SEO offers premium level support available with its premium plan only. For free users, they have set up a knowledge base covering all the FAQs to help you resolve mostly all the issues. But with that being said, Yoast SEO has proven itself to be extremely reliable over the years, and you will rarely have to get in touch with their support team.

With Rank Math, the story is entirely different. Being the new kid on the block, the plugin does have minor bugs and issues here and there which might compel you to get in touch with their support team. But with that being said, the support team from MyThemeShop is extremely helpful and active, available 24*7 around the clock to resolve all your issues.

So Which SEO Plugin Should You Choose?

As you can see clearly, Rank Math is offering a fantastic collection of features that can help you take your SEO game to the next level. This isn’t to say that these functionalities are not available with Yoast SEO, but they are reserved for the premium version.

With this in consideration, if you are already a Yoast SEO premium user, then it makes little sense to move to Rank Math. However, users with a free Yoast SEO installation will highly benefit by making the switch, especially when you consider that Rank Math has a dedicated feature that allows you to import all your Yoast SEO settings.

Furthermore, thanks to its intuitive UI and a comprehensive setup wizard, Rank Math is also the most beginner-friendly between the two plugins.

I personally prefer Rank Math as it has great support for it’s users even though it’s a free plugin. One thing I don’t like is, there is not any support for Google News and some Schema Type is not available and we can’t use multiple Schema Type in a single post. But overall it’s good in comparison with Yoast and other SEO plugins.

Thanks for sharing. I think Rank Math is better than Yoast. I installed Rank Math plugin 3 days ago it is working well than Yoast. And also I’m using Yoast SEO free version from 2 years but it is not better than Rank Math. Rank Math is free no need to pay. I really recommended Rank Math

I tested Both plugins and i can see Rank math is easy to setup, make things easy to newbie, by how quickly setup his own blog.

In the other hand what i don’t like in Yoast every time i open my dashboard there is an update for it and even and there is no a complete documentation for it.

If you want a good setting you need to buy their service. and even i think yoast developer’s they don’t understand how google work by using the old method by focus on meta (title + description and focus keyword). and keyword ratio.

Now we need something follow google update and advice us how we can setting a good article or page structure and gain google trust.

hahahah, at least his review is honest. Maybe he’s scared to convert to Rankmath? That’s his business, right? I was scared too and just switch from yoast to rankmath today and will be watching the traffic change for the next 3 to 6 months. I’ve seen what rankmath has done for my clients and now I’m ready to try it on my own site. Scary stuff. But exciting too.

I set up Rank Maths on my website and i noticed all my articles disappeared on Google. Secondly, Google stopped indexing my news articles. I had no choice than to uninstall it. Will try again but honestly, I’m worried about my website.

Good comparison! Yoast SEO vs Rank Math. Since July 2019 onwards am using Rank Match, it was migrated from Yoast SEO and I don’t see many issues on it. The only problem I faced so far was when you run SEO Analyzer 2nd time the site may turn to 500 error which you need to remove the “ank_math_seo_analysis_results” entry from DB to restore back to normal. They are trying their level best to resolve this error permanently but so far not fixed yet. Let us hope for the best! I truly recommended Rank Math in my personal opinion.

I have been using Rank Math since the beginning and I feel it as much more user-friendly and has more features than the free version of Yoast SEO. Overall, I feel Rank Math beats Yoast SEO and I recommend using this than the Yoast SEO.

I use Rank Math on my website in Russian and it’s quite frustrating, that this plugin does not catch the keywords with Russian language specifics, and even doe not see it in the post slug, even if it properly transliterated.

The same problem with Yoast… Looks like both of these plugins are good enough, and Rank Math is doing a promotional campaign.

Despite all of this I prefer Rank Math since it works well with schema markup in my theme, and Yoast has conflicts in it.

Rank Math SEO Plugins is an excellent Yoast’s alternative. It has to build its audience and needs some testing, but it provides many features that are usually available in Premium versions of other WordPress SEO plugins.

I tested Both plugins and i can see Rank math is easy to setup, make things easy to newbie, by how quickly setup his own blog.

In the other hand what i don’t like in Yoast every time i open my dashboard there is an update for it and even and there is no a complete documentation for it.

If you want a good setting you need to buy their service. and even i think yoast developer’s they don’t understand how google work by using the old method by focus on meta (title + description and focus keyword). and keyword ratio.

Now we need something follow google update and advice us how we can setting a good article or page structure and gain google trust.

I was using yoast and it’s a fantastic plugin. But from the last 6 to 7 month I have moved to rank math and it gives me unbelievable results. I think when it’s comes to SEO, one should choose wisely bcoz, good seo can boost you in google result.

I have been use yoast seo plugin and It was working good for me, also I am comfort with it . Recently everyone started suggesting to use rank math for seo and I am interested to test the rank math because of popularity. Now if I suddenly change the plugin from yoast to rank math does it effects my seo in negative way?

We use Yoast for SEO. We are completely happy with its performance. Yes, rank math is gaining more popularity in recent times but I think for beginners Yoast is the best to use and understand more about focused keyword.

I personally did not try the rank math but I am sure in the near future I will. However, both are SEO plugins. Haha!

I’ve been using Yoast for years. It’s done a great job for me and no real problems with it. However, I’ve been recommended Rank Math and I’m thinking about giving it a try. We are an agency and changing tried and tested plugins with our team and all our websites is time consuming, so I’m still on the fence with it. Is it really that much better? What about page loading times? Yoast Pro can be quite heavy on loading times, is Rank Math much faster? I’ll do some more research and do some more testes before we decide to change over!

I have multiple online projects and many websites running Yoast from a few years now. I decided to try rank math on my personal blog for a while and see how it goes. Is there an option to export everything back to Yoast after that? Because so far this is my only concern before I make the switch.

In the last months I’ve moved from All in one SEO to Yoast to Rank Math. I really love Rank Math, it’s simple to use and very complete. I like keywords suggestions, it makes my life easier. Now I see my organic visitors increase on a daily basis!

You have writtas a well-researched Article. But As I am considered, I love rankmath, because the ease of use and their support. They have Facebook group where they are hungry to help you on anything you need.

However, they provide some premium features which are paid in yoast.

I already moved from yoast to Rankmath. Now I have RM installed on my 2 websites.

Very good article although I don’t know why Rank is free, where it is maintained or how it has revenues to make a better plugin than a company that has been collecting licenses for several users for years.

Thank you for sharing this information. I was confused between both yoast and rank math which one should I use for my website Clicksbazaar. I am using Yoast seo but after reading this review I think I should change to Rankmath for my website.

This is a mindblowing post for SEO plugins. I also used RankMath. A few days ago I used the tool for my 2 sites. RankMath is a great tool. I agree Yoast is also a good plugin. But I like RankMath, it’s work is very fast and point to point. That’s why I like most RankMath.

I’ve been using Rankmath for more than 1 months! Still, I am trying to figure out how it differs or better than Yoast SEO. Till today, I’ve used Yoast SEO for many blogs. But for my current blog, trying RankMath! Let’s see how it ranks my articles! By the way, thanks for the honest review.

Based on the analysis i think Rank Math outweighs Yoast and I will definitely give it a try. Even Yoast premium is not that good due to many technical glitches especially with regards to indexing images of a website.